Tuesday, June 20, 2017

Im happy that you concede that due to the Buhari initiative which I foreshawed on this forum by advocating a'scorched earth assault' on enemy positions the secessionist force is now on the run now on a full guerrila tactic.

Its only a matter of time before the gallant federal forces wear them out and the resistance will fizzle out and and inglorious band disbanded.

Yes I was among those who suggested that earlier resistance against the GEJ govt may be due to insider informatiin given to Boko Haramites by those who did not want GEJ to succeed in routing them ( perhaps including those who are supposed to be GEJs field commanders.)

From what we now see and hear from Biafranists if GEJ had succeeded there is no knowing if we wont see a filmography depicting GEJ in combat fatigue of Biafra routing federal forces a la Boko Haram and declaring a Republic of Biafra all over Nigerian territory.

Northern commanders may have foreseen this possibility and may have preferred to work with a northern commander in chief to secure this surrender.

"The country was on fire from a religiously inspired secessionist bid. Jonathan could not be relied upon to bring the conflict to speedy resolution because he was the general without soldiers. Field commanders from the north had no faith in him and preferred to loot rather than serve him because to them he symbolized the cultural conquest by the West which they were in part up in arms against. Thats why the Nigerian hegemony (in the Gramscian sense) chose Buhari to lead the war."

Why then, well after Buhari announced the "technical defeat of Boko Haram", the terrorist group was able to launch, a few weeks ago, an attack on Maiduguri, the capital of Borno state, a city with a large, established military garrison, and were beaten back only with the aid of the air force reinforcing the ground troops.

Why should Boko Haram be able to even get near Maidiguri, which they have attacked a no of times during the GEJ era, control of which would do much much to boost their caliphate plans,a realization that means the army should have made such an approach impossible?

Has the Boko Haram war made any significant progress beyond the terrorists being driven to the outskirts of Borno in GEJ's time, and even though Sambisa might have been conquered, have they not found new territory in which to regroup and launch that last bold attack?

Your theory could shed some light on what is going on, but I wonder if you are not stretching it beyond the saboteurs who leaked information and perhaps weapons to Boko Haram, rather than a tacit mutiny by Northern commanders. If GEJ's Boko Haram war was ineffectual by the time he handed over, Boko Haram would have still been bombing and machine gunning govt establishments, military installations and churches in the North on a practically weekly basis as they had been doing before the 2013 state of emergency, in collaboration with the growing disenchantment of the Northern Muslim poliuace and their alliance with the army represented particularly by the civilian JTF drove them to the outskirts of Borno, where their most spectacular attacks were in children's schools, horrible as those were, and what I see as the Borno state governor Kassim Shettima aided Chibok incident.

I realise its convenient for anti-GEJists to paint the war in that time as largely ineffective and marked by corruption, but in the light of your theory, what do you say to the renewed fightng strength, attack reach and boldness of Boko Haram?

You are right Ken. The hatred seems to have ballooned and claimed this listserve as collateral ever since the ouster of Goodluck Jonathan as President (whom some now call a Biafran even though he never referred to himself as such when campaignng for , or ruling Nigeria. Otherwise how would anyone want to vote for a Biafran as Nigerian head of state!)

This is the most vocal evidence that there are those in the South East who think unless one of them is at the peak of executive power the country cannot achieve its destiny because their own destiny is the only correct destiny.

They have their counter parts in the North too and that is why both are always at each others throat. Religion plays a large part because unlike in the Yoruba states in which both monotheisms are roughly equally divided in the South East vs the North there is overwhelming supremacy of either of the dominant monotheisms. (As we all know religion is the code for a way of life) Unlike the Yoruba who keep much of their evangelism within Yoruba states the Igbo prefer mass geographical spread (taking advantage of protection by the Constitution) take their dominant monotheism with them build churches in the North hoping for converts in alliance with minority northerners but encounter vicious resistance from local majority northern communities who prefer their age long religious ways of life.

The ouster of Jonathan with whom they ethnically identify is the main cause of this resurgence. No matter what the will of the people have come to pass. In so far as Jonathan was not ousted in a military coup Im personally satisfied.

The country was on fire from a religiously inspired secessionist bid. Jonathan could not be relied upon to bring the conflict to speedy resolution because he was the general without soldiers. Field commanders from the north had no faith in him and preferred to loot rather than serve him because to them he symbolized the cultural conquest by the West which they were in part up in arms against. Thats why the Nigerian hegemony (in the Gramscian sense) chose Buhari to lead the war. The Biafranists took this too personally.

I think there are two issues, at least, going on that I can see as an outsider. One is the continuation of the biafra question, which we thought had been settled in the 70s

There is a very similar situation of discontent dating back to the same period, western cameroon.

The other issue, or aspect of it, they key one I think, is the really great hatred that seems to be characterizing this debate. Even the scots and british do no use such invective over the question of devolution, although not that long ago the british spoke of the irish as inferior beings, and the irish couldn't mention the english without using expletives and spitting.

You claim that Biafra is not unique in the world in its move toward secession. It is to what end that matters. The problem here is people of that region blow too much hot and cold for too long over the issue. I want people in the area to make up their mind once and for all and lets get things over with once and for all in a civilized way.

I am not one of those who will beg anybody not to secede. If the Yoruba want to secede, by all means let them make up their mind and get on with it in a civilized way and let the rest of Nigeria get on with their lives. I believe in one Nigeria for those who have an irrevocable vision for that enterprise. I dont believe that if a part want a few extra things and they dont get it the threat of secession will be the next cheap blackmail while their kinsmen who have been benefitting from the Nigerian system maintain a deafening silence rather than being at the barricades organizing counter movements emphasizing the rewards of Nigerian citizens for those who diligently play their part.

But for the counter movement visibly led by 'the Gord father' (Gordon Brown) the UK could not have survived the last Scottish independence referendum. Today the union is intact. Where are the Nigerian Igbo counterparrs today benefitting from the Nigerian federation making the case for Nigeria vociferously from the roof tops? I believe this Nigerian government should change administrative reorganisation with an Igbo citizen in the information minister portfolio whose marching orders must be judged by how far they are able to counter and neutralize the secessionist propaganda in the SE.

When America wanted to secede from the UK they made up their mind about it resolutely without blowing hot and cold about it. The UK sent an expedition to quash the rebellion. It failed. The UK did not collapse as a result of that. The UK still exists today even stronger than at that period.

If we are talking about more than biafra, then maybe we could speculate on independence or separatist struggles that are more meritorious than others? And who decides that?

But consider just a few cases. How about algeria or the portuguese colonies that were considered part of their colonial rulers' territories, in contrast with colonies or mandated territories? The united states was part of britain, as were australia and canada; quebec is part of canada; eritrea was part of ethiopia.

The list is endless. There is something fundamental about this process of amalgamation and separation. Consider the various empires like austro-hungary or the ottoman.

Biafra is not alone in the world, which you indicate. The u.s.s.r, yugoslavia, etc., all part of a pattern of disintegration of a dominant state.

I know some believe national boundaries are or should be natural. that's not really good history.

Look at a map of the u.s. In 1800 and now, and consider how much war put the country together. Look at texas and california, added through war. Should not the mexicans have been supported by the world, and compensated.

How are we supposed to think about this process? Which struggles merit our support?

Are you imagining a debate where that question might be put to biafra?

I am the outsider to this debate, trying to understand its complex history

I insist that nowhere in the world would those who are saddled with protecting the territorial integrity of a country sit idly by if secession is declared. Witness Cherchnya and the Barthes separatist war in Spain.

In the declaration of Biafra the Feds were left with no option but restore the territorial iintegrity of Nigeria by whatever means.

I do not believe in your submission that those who want secession should fight for it. I would say those who want separatism should embrace the democratic option.

The very declaration of Biafra was an act of war against the Constitution and the sovereignty of the Federal Republic of Nigeria in the same way that the secessionist gambit of Boko Haram was a declaration of war against the sovereignty of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.'

Boko Haram initiated and sustained violence by killing rival Islamic clerics and by bombing Federal govt institutions, killing fed govt representatives, bombing churches and machine gunning Christians, and after seizing significant territory through these methods, declaring a caliphate over which they flew their flag.

Biafra was declared in protection of Igbos following the anti-Igbo pogrom in the North in which thousands of innocents were massacred and the failure of the fed govt to guarantee the safety of Ndigbo. If I recall correctly, a major revision to the Aburi Accord on account of which Ojukwu and his team as leaders of Biafra rejected the revision was the fed govt insisting on its right to declare a state of emergency in any region. In the light of the virtually govt sponsored pogrom that had massacred thousands of Igbos earlier such a level of power arrogated to the fed govt would leave the SE open to further machinations at the hands of that govt, meaning the safety of the Igbos who had fled to the SE for safety could not be guaranteed.

The anti-Igbo pogrom is genocidal while the unilateral modification of the Aburi Accord suggests an insensitivity to the fallout from the genocidal action. What is war but the effort to subdue through force, whether physical, political or both?

There is a world of difference between the non-violent self defensive strategy of Biafra in relation to the fed govt at its founding and the murderous quest to set up an Islamic caliphate by Boko Haram through terror initiated by the terrorist group.

Anyway, as Nigerians we are all in the same terrible situation .

I hope those who believe the institutions that run the country are working well and can be relied on are following the latest news on Saraki, who has been acquitted,an example of power play whether or not he was guilty, and on the money found in the Ikoyi apartment, of which no news has been forthcoming from the VP's investigative panel on the subject, an outcome some hold is so bcs Buhari is described as having known of the money.

We need fundamental, transformative change. Those who are for restructuring should fight for it. Those who are for secession should fight for it. They should support each other. We should all support either of these reworkings of Nigeria.

Let me thank you, thank your patience andtolerance in advance,for putting up with the kind of answer I suspect that I'm going to give : More questions.

I want to at least satisfy my conscience. Con-science

"Everybody who read the Jungle Book knows that Riki tiki tavi's a mongoose who kills snakes. Well, when I was a young man I was led to believe there were organisations to kill my snakes for me,i.e. the church, i.e. the government , i.e. the school. But when I got a little olderI learned I had to kill them myself" ( Donovan : Riki Tiki Tavi

At primary school (in Fulham ) I learned a rime which began

"Sticks and stones may break my bones , but words can't hurt me"

Another version is "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never break me"

They tried to instil that kind of attitude in us at school , not least of all to avert the fist fights that were a daily occurrence in the playground - between friends, sometimes directly after playing/ sharing marbles.For the sensitives(many dimensions), be they Joos (another spelling, don't take offence) Christians (another faith) or Muslims (other believers), another truth could be, "Sticks and stones may break my bones and words can also hurt me"

Because words have meanings, trajectories, they can therefore cause offence and offence can have consequences -

Consider - and this is authoritative about the Prophet of Islam ( s.a.w.) : "The number of the campaigns which he led in person during the last ten years of his life is twenty-seven, in nine of which there was hard fighting. The number of the expeditions which he planned and sent out under other leaders is thirty-eight." Read on...

The venerable Toyin Vincent Adepoju made the following apparently rational assertion in this forum:

There is no easy answer. Should the laws that apply in this forum, about name-calling and the danger of descending to "the primitive moment" also apply to Literature? I am inclined to agree with you - but - BUT we cannot legislate away the predictable/ unpredictable consequences - no more than murder is prevented because the Almighty has legislated through His revelation at Mt. Sinai, " Thou shalt not kill"

Judaism has it's own law of blasphemy (only God can be blasphemed) and in Islam this extends to vilification of all those that Islam regards as prophets too - Jesus, King David, King Solomon, Lukman - although the honour due to the Prophet of Islam seems to be more jealously protected than that of any other Prophet. So in Stockholm a few years ago there was the Ecco Homo exhibition without anybody coming to any grievous bodily harm or death at the hands of some Muslims...

As for me , having made a precautionary distinction between suicide and Martyrdom, I don't know how far I would resist torture and the threat of immediate death (as in the case of Sabbatai Zevi) when it comes to defending the Almighty's honour as per Kiddush Hashem ...

Some fifteen years ago subscribed to one of the freedoms being promoted by David Horowitz : the right to be able to critique religion without falling foul of religious authority, in some cases the death penalty...

The problem of religious language and anti-religion language causing offence will only evaporate after science has the upper-hand. I came to this conclusion exactly this evening - we ( two Scrabble freaks, Ken Baskin ( African-American) Lefifi Tladi ( back in town from Pretoria, South Africa ) and yours truly, Cornelius Shalom Aleichem (Abeokuta City) had finished five games of Scrabble this evening when the conversation turned to religion - during our sets of Scrabble I had quoted from today's Forum :

"Thinking a thing in English is thinking English about a thing"- Ngugi wa Thiong'o as I told them that Nigerians are now taking over the English language sphere as world Champion in Scrabble and that last year's world champion was beaten badly in Lagos this year by some other Nigerians and that before Nigeria took over the French had had their turn as world champion of the English word game (My guys had two Scrabble dictionaries which were consulted occasionally. ( By the way Ken - "ger" has not yet found its way into those dictionaries, but "gerah" has.) I told them that I'm sure that the Nigerian professionals would have memorised those dictionaries forwards and backwards by now, so what are we waiting for? Well obviously these guys are word-men and worldly too, so, soon enough they were spouting cosmology, evolution - I swear that if some White Folks had eavesdropped on us it would have confirmed their cherished prejudices - at one point they were uniformly agreed that (evolution) didn't I know that ( preposterous suggestion) it was three monkey sitting in Ken's kitchen right on top of Stockholm, top floor, playing Scrabble. Do monkeys have souls? I asked them. (Well the Pakistani and Indian Muslims want to ridicule Hinduism's Hanuman who it is their wont to refer to as " the monkey god". Maybe there should be a law against that too.

If it were left up to me, should a guy like Lars Vilks ever arrive in Riyadh or Tehran he should be given ten good lashes on his bare bottom, right there at the airport and asked if he would like some more.

I must get up now - ( had haemorrhoids this morning) - sitting too long at the computer. Looked at myself in the mirror this morning and could not say like Jesus, (John 14: 9 ) : " he that hath seen me hath seen the Father" considered a blasphemy by the Pharisaic authorities of the day and a capital offence.

I wish that I could have said, " I am an old scholar, better looking now than when I was young. That's what sitting on your ass does to your face." (Beautiful Losers)

Still happy, I leave you with the title song of this album : Gorilla...

So long,

Cornelius

On Wednesday, 14 June 2017 18:12:17 UTC+2, Kenneth Harrow wrote:

rushdie's novel was a novel, and a pretty great one.

Cornelius, you need to really emphasize that point, the right for authors of fiction to be blasphemers in the eyes of some people, probably not of their real readers. The right to saw blasphemy is basic, it is fundamental to being human with other humans in the world.

We don't have the right to suppress blasphemy; we do have the right to suppress shouting fire in a theater. The line between the two is a difficult one to parse, but difficult doesn't mean impossible, it means human

An aside and a slight point of correction - re - "Salman the Scottish First Minister who organised the referendum"

An excursion : The name Salman sticks in the eye of course, because first of all it doesn't sound Scottish, even if these days you never know, since further South, the city of London does have a mayor by the name of Sadiq Khan; but even before then those who fear the emergence of Eurabia have the UK on the map as "North Pakistan"

Well, at least in Shia Islam there's the most famous Salman - Salman al Farsi - i.e. Salman the Persian (whose idea of building a trench contributed to the Muslims victory in the historic "Battle of the Trench." Then there's the most infamous Salman yet, that scoundrel Salman Rushdie (later Knighted by Her Majesty) the author of "The Satanic Verses " which ignited the ire of Iran's First Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khomeini in the form of a literary fatwa : The Death penalty! Some still say that it was an extreme form of literary criticism. And here too we could be talking about a double entendre since in the novel Salman Rushdie appoints Salman the Persian as the Prophet's scribe - ( historically inaccurate) and a mischievous one at that - a scribe who would make slight changes when writing down the revelation - and since the Prophet did not notice his errant editorialising, the scribe was emboldened to experiment with making other changes in his manuscript. A very sensitive matter in terms of historical inaccuracies and considering the inerrancy of the Quran as scripture, a very sensitive matter indeed - so conspiracy theorists could readily believe that Rushdie was an imperial agent hell -bent distorting and disparaging Islam, for which reason he should be punished two times : Hanged, drawn and quartered in this life and then dance on hot coals in the hell-fire, for more than one eternity. Cf. The Latest Decalogue

I read "The Satanic Verses" a few months before the Fatwa was issued and Rush-die of course went underground - as I suppose , you would have done, too (Pikuach nefesh) . Before the Fatwa I thought it was a phantasmagoria battle between good and evil - and had read it mostly because I liked all of Rushdie's earlier stuff , especially because Rushdie did not seem to suffer from that kind of enormous respect for Her Majesty's English , the kind of respect that probably inhibits some writers - and even non writers suffering from grammatical inhibitions. Rushdie cd kick the lingo in the ess without needless " corrections"from Frank, Farooq or France. Ah Rushdie's infamous famous three about the English lass: find her, fuck her and leave her which Ahmed Deedat did go on about.

But to the point. The current First Minister is Nicola Sturgeon and the then First Prime Minister and leader of the Scottish National Party who worked indefatigably for that Referendum was Alex Salmond( sounds remarkably close to " Alex Salman)

(BTW I was in New York at the time, but I'm told by some of the soul Brothers who represented Sweden at FESTAC in Lagos in 1979 , that when they were asked where they were from they replied, "Sweden" but what their interlocutors heard was "Sudan" - that made more sense to them. The Sweden of both ignorance and the imagination being the place where polar bears come from. In a similar way when asked where do you come from and I answer Sierra Leone, people, especially from the Middle East, then follow up with a second question : Syria ? They must be hard of hearing. Does Syria sound like Sierra Leone? ( True up till today the Lebanese in Sierra Leone are called " Syrians" - they arrived in Sierra Leone more than a hundred years ago, when there was no Lebanon) . Also occasionally - people who have never heard of a country called Sierra Leone follow up my answer with a second question : Surinam? Some others even go a little further : Sri Lanka?

Meriting my asking ; " Do I look like a Tamil tiger?

On Wednesday, 14 June 2017 10:36:37 UTC+2, Olayinka Agbetuyi wrote:

Ken.

Devolution in Scotland is the half way solution to PREVENT separation.

About half of Scots did not believe in separation and that was why the referendum was held. (SNP lost even more seats to the Conservatives in Scotland in the just concluded elections including Salman who supervised the referendum)

The result of the last general election in the past few weeks now indicate that even FEWER Scots now believe in outright separation than at the time of the referendum. (SNP lost more seats to the Conservatives in Scotland including Salman the Scottish First Minister who organised the referendum.

Is there no better means to achieve true federalism without violence? The Ndigbo have their representatives in the National Assembly, why can't they use a democratic means similar to that of the Scottish in the UK?

They should go through the constitutional means and use relevant provisions of the constitution to justify their reasonable demand.

It is better to live in peace or separate, if need be in peace. But it is beautiful to be together as one Nigeria.

We should note that the Igbos that are agitating for the independence of Biafra are probably doing so to be politically relevant. Experience has shown that once their leaders have become politically relevant and become part of political office holders, they usually throw up their initial ambition into the air and another group resurfaces.

The Biafra vision is trans-Igbo in its ideological fundamentals but is Igbo in its practical expression.

The SW political elite have previously been the primary advocates of restructuring the nation's political and economic organization to allow for the independence of its constituent units rather than the current crippling dominance from the centre and the debilitating dependence on the mono-economy represented by Niger Delta oil but the previously loudest voices from that region have been muted since they succeeded in entering Aso Rock through the vice-presidency of Yemi Osinbajo, silence inspired by their Hausa-Fulani allies who have consistently voiced their resistance to reworking the political and economic organization of the nation.

It has therefore fallen to the largely Igbo pro-Biafra agitators, pursuing the secession vision of the reworking of Nigeria, to struggle for a social structure that is shaped in the interests of its citizens, not the interests of colonial master Britain who created the dysfunctional nation and the right wing Muslim North, who have succeeded in bleeding the nation through various structural controls, from multiplication of local governments in their region as opposed to other regions as a means of attracting federal revenue and the establishing of ridiculously low cut off marks as opposed to high cut off marks for other regions in entrance exams to schools and universities, breeding a culture of mediocrity.

Do you want a country where you and your descendants are empowered to actualize their potential,where excellence is central in the quest for education and job placements, where you will be free from Fulani terrorism as the nomadic advance guard of terrorists run cows across your schools and farms, attacking and killing any who oppose the destruction of their lives and property by such atavistic lifestyles?

Do you want a nation in which the parasitic, initiative deadening culture of flow of oil from the Niger Delta to the federal centre and its distribution to the regions as the central economic activity is terminated, as each region or nation struggles to build its own economic structure, taking the country into industrialization, attracting back to Nigeria or nations created from the older country citizens across the world who have fled to other nations because their own country is asphyxiating to human development?

If you do, join the Biafra secession struggle or the restructuring struggle. Taking refuge in castigating the Biafra struggle as it champions freedom from slavery is equivalent to sustaining your own slavery in the killing fields of Nigeria, where the massacres of thousands, murderous colonization initiatives exemplified by the massacres in Agatu in the Middle Belt and Nimbo in the South East, by the militia/politician network of Fulani terrorists,who remain free to walk the land even as they boldly and loudly justify their massacres of communities, demonstrates your status as worse than that of second class citizens, being that of sub-humans whose lives are at the mercy of their murderous masters.

The contemporary struggle for Biafra is anchored on the conviction that Nigeria, as it is presently constituted, is a failure that stunts the development of its citizens and only the self determination of its constituent units can assure the development of adequate human value.

"Speak only for your jaundiced self as Obi Nwakama and not for the Igbo. I have more Igbo real friends than you do!"

-Olayinka Agbetuyi

Agbetuyi:

I am going to make this my very last statement on this round of talk on Biafra because, not unexpectedly it did quickly degenerate into school-yard antics. It has become predictable, circular and boring. When people cannot deploy coherent argument, or when they enter slippery zones where they have nothing better to say, they resort to blackmail and name calling. You want to bully me with the age of you sister. I do not give a shit how old you are, or how old your sister is. Age alone does not confer regard, integrity and wisdom, none of which, I'm sorry to say, you have demonstrated, do. You have for instance not defined how it is that my argument is frivolous. Is it because I reminded you of your tendency to invoke carnage on the Igbo when they seek justice? Yet I am the one who is a "laughing stock." I do not know who is laughing, and who is the "stock." But this cliché is deployed to silence those who speak to things that are either beyond your comprehension, or that frighten you. There are two kinds of laughter: there is the laugher of the fool who laughs because he dos not know when to laugh, and there is also the laughter of the inebriated, who has a compulsion disorder at that point of over excitement. And so you can laugh all you want, if it makes you happy to think that Obi Nwakanma is a "laughing stock" in your forum. I mean, you must have clearly taken opinion samples from members of this forum to come to this claim. it is all in character of course, that you either do not know the exact meaning of the terms you use, or you are as often as it is true remarkably full of beans. But what do you expect of people who could call Ojukwu a "coward": a man fights a war, goes into exile, returns to great acclaim, and sits "gidigbam" in the capital city on his return, and never stopped talking, never pulled punches, and never hid behind the veil of silence. When all the Generals who fought him saw him, they often stood in attention to salute him or otherwise fled from him. If such a man were a coward, then "cowardice" has a different meaning. But of course, the Agbetuyi's and the like, because they need to feel happy with themselves call Ojukwu a "coward," Obi Nwakanma, some "laughing stock," and Achuzia, "self-acclaimed war lord." You think you can really bully me with such verbal blackmail? Who gives a shit what you think? What you think does not really count where it matters most.

And please, do not insult the word "friendship." You have no Igbo friends. You have "Igboanguish" - its a form of a Nigerian national anxiety disorder; the same that affects redneck neighborhoods in the American south when it comes to African-Americans. You'd see the most racist of such say, "I have black friends." If you have Igbo friends, you wouldn't say it; there is nothing special in having Igbo friends, and the very fact that you mark them as "Igbo friends" speaks to the real issue here. I'd be unable to help you. You need to consult a shrink to deal with this depth of the unheimlich. You must stop thinking about Igbo bodies trucked home for burial because they protest. Period. The Igbo have articulated the very basis of their demands: that Nigeria must begin to treat all Nigerians with equality. The Igbo suffer disproportionately in the Nigerian enterprise - by all the indices that they have deployed in their complaints which I will not rehash here. But at the core of Igbo demand is the equality of citizenship. No Nigerian must be discriminated against wherever they reside in Nigeria. No section of Nigeria must be favored to the deficit of any part. In other words, all policy of development must be based on the human index and the human factor, not on the geographical. Public service must be transparent, etc. The Igbo understand that they have to lead the charge in the transformation of Nigeria, as they did in the anti-colonial movement, for the restoration of the equal rights of citizenship. But now hear you: "the Igbo complain too much, everybody is marginalized. They should shut up!" I am paraphrasing you. But the Igbo have never asked you not to protest; nor have they suggested that you be killed and your body parts be recovered from across Nigeria for seeking social justice. These are your very words: "Why is the case of Igbo unique and why must a section of the Igbo continually blackmail the rest of Nigeria with secession to wrest more than their just due from the federation?" This statement eerily echoes that which feeds the impulsion to genocide, whether it was by what was said of the Jews in Europe- before their expulsion from Spain or by the Nazi pogrom, or with the Tutsis in Rwanda, before their systematic slaughter. But you do not have the emotional intelligence to get even the subtle hints made by Ken Harrow or Chidi. Yet I am the laughing stock. And if you care to follow the responses to this question about Biafra and the conclusion of the war - you'd immediately notice that it follows a known and predictable pattern. It is often by the same people, from the same section of the forum and of the nation. These folk suffer from extreme forms of the anxiety called "Igboanguish." They feel rattled by the fact that the Igbo want equal rights and justice: how dare these "conquered" or "vanquished" Igbo who "surrendered" their rights?, you guys ask. This monomanic compulsion to contain the Igbo is the reason why the Igbo want out. There is your answer. But why do you want to live with the Igbo in the same country? You don't like them. You feel threatened by their presence. You can rid yourself of this Igbo problem by writing to your rep in the National Assembly to support the Act of referendum to determine the choice for secession. That is the democratic and civilized thing to do. Not blackmail the Igbo with the threat of slaughter. Once the Igbo have their own country, you may now turn back any of the buses that you see leaving the East daily towards the West at your borders. You can then also not only restrict their entry, but legitimately expel them, and through visa regulations make certain that the Igbo vermin no longer infests your neighborhood. But for as long as they are part of the same country, their rights to disperse and settle, and enjoy all the rights of citizenship must never be denied them. That's their just due. You cannot want the Igbo and not want them at the same time. There are many Igbo in this forum who keep silent, and watch, and do not bother to respond to the inanities of this obsessive anti-Igbo lynch mob. I do not speak for them. I speak on the simple premise that I have something to say, and that I will follow the Achebean injunction to "balance the stories," so that years from now, if anybody ever finds cause to read these exchanges, they will know who actually is the "laughing stock," and that yours is not the single story. In other words, I write this for my grand children. But I too have become too bored with its circularity. I shall have nothing more to say o this subject until another round of lies that needs to be corrected surfaces. And there you have it.

Let me be forthright with you: You are rhe same age as my youngest sister who holds the same doctorate degree as you do and if she argues in the same vacuous way that you do she knows I would disown her. Agbetuyis dont argue like babies.

You debase the qualifications you hold with the irresponsible line of argument you pursue which has made you the laughing stock of the forum. I tried my best to shield you from attack by exasperated members but you are your own worst enemy.

Did you read the piece byJibrin

Ibrahim on perception of marginalization by ethnicities in Nigeria? Why is the case of Igbo unique and why must a section of the Igbo continually blackmail the rest of Nigeria with secession to wrest more than their just due from the federation.

I repeat any such Igbo must feel free to withraw to Igboland to continue to deal only with fellow Igbo and leave the other responsible Igbo who realize that living is a question of give and take with other people to continue with their livelihoods in any part of Nigeria in a spirit of give and take.

If there is any act of violence against the persons of such Igbo I can guarantee that we the conscientious non Igbo will be their first line of defence and that they dont need such bigoted, prebendal, self-seeking, pretencious, ethnic jingoist and rabble rousers as yourself as champions of their interests.

Speak only for your jaundiced self as Obi Nwakama and not for the Igbo. I have more Igbo real friends than you do!

Agbetuyi, you did not get the hint of reproach in Chidi and Ken Harrow's retort. The first thing that comes to your mind when the Igbo protest, or raise a voice to complain about their situation, is Igbo bodies slaughtered across Nigeria and trucked back to the East. Why do you conceive of that kind of carnage when it comes to the Igbo? Why do you have to kill the Igbo for political speech, for asking for justice, or for actually asking for recognition of the equality of all Nigerians failing which separation? Why is it that the only Igbo who has to stay alive in your mind is the silent Igbo, or the prostrate Igbo, or the malleable Igbo, or the Igbo who is merely "photo-on-the wall"? Now you say, "Amen!" But "Amen!" to what? To a Freudian slip? I will only ask you to be very careful with what you wish for. The Igbo are very angry and are not looking again to be slaughtered. We must make every effort to allow peace, secure it, and avoid every urge to engage in slaughter, so that we do not open the kind of dangerous floodgate Ken Harrow has alluded to. You must note this however: the Igbo are not willing to live in Nigeria as "conquered" people, or people who "surrendered" their rights with war. If seeking justice in Nigeria means slaughter of the Igbo, then you must gird your loins with hardier cloth, and you must be prepared to kill them all. But I just hope that more civilized, more humane, and more tolerant impulses prevail, and not the impulses that dream about scattered Igbo body parts ferried home for burials.